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The Power of Quarterly Business Reviews: How QBRs Drive Growth and Build Client Relationships

Melissa Page — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 20:28:10 +0000

Let’s be honest – if you’ve ever thought that Quarterly Business Reviews (or QBRs) were a huge headache, you’re not alone! A QBR is an alignment meeting that’s held every three months between a company like Perficient and its clients.

When my director first introduced us to the idea, the team was skeptical. It seemed like just another box to check, and my first few QBRs felt more like a chore than an opportunity. No surprise when they didn’t lead to much account growth! Over time, though, I realized what a gift they are, and everything changed. Let me tell you why QBRs matter and how to make them work for you!

There are three parts to a productive QBR – showcasing successes, offering recommendations, and reviewing goals. Let’s dig into each part individually.

Part 1 – Showcasing Past Successes

The first step in any QBR is what earns that “quarterly review” name. This is where you get to show off the Perficient team’s accomplishments over the previous quarter. What were our big wins? What cool new features launched? Sometimes we have quieter quarters than others, but there is always something you can display as an achievement. Get creative and be sure to lean on other team members for suggestions!

When you’re showing off the team’s wins, make sure you keep in mind that not everyone on the call has the same role. One fantastic benefit of QBRs is getting to present to VPs and other executive leadership who may not be involved in the day-to-day engagement. However, they may not really understand the impact of a statement like, “We successfully implemented a multi-instance deployment strategy leveraging Sitecore’s xDB architecture, optimizing the content delivery network integration for enhanced latency performance.”

There’s a reason that KISS is such a popular principle– keep it simple! Use non-technical language as much as possible and remember to tie your achievements back to how the client benefits. We all know Perficient teams deliver maximum results, but how does that really impact your client’s bottom line? Explain exactly how this past quarter helped contribute to their success, through wins like boosted site security or reduced costs.

Part 2 – Offering Thoughtful Recommendations for Improvement

Now we head into everyone’s favorite part – offering recommendations and driving new business! This is where you start looking ahead to the upcoming quarter and thinking about The Next Big Thing. Sure, it might be tempting to think this is your chance to push all those shiny upgrades and premium options that will help pad your pockets (kidding!). But in reality, that’s not at all what a good QBR is about.

What really drives success is understanding your client’s story. A sales leader I admire once said that you can’t be truly successful at selling unless and until you deeply understand someone’s story. What motivates them? What do they look back on at the end of the year and feel proud of? When you understand these things about your client, you open the door to making thoughtful recommendations that actually offer value.

It’s not about making the sale – it’s about taking care of your clients. It’s about understanding their business, their needs, what their frustrations are, and what will really drive their growth. Pushing that flashy new tool may net you a bigger commission check, but when you get to next quarter’s QBR, are you going to be able to show that it helped your client meet their long-term strategic goals? Or is it going to be something you sheepishly leave out of the QBR, because your client spent a bunch of money and had nothing to show for it?

Part 3 – Aligning with the Client’s Business Goals

By the time you get to this stage of most QBRs, you’ve been presenting for about 45 minutes straight. Now it’s your client’s turn to shine! You want to ensure that you’re aligned with their business strategy, so kick this part off by asking them what the future looks like. Some good example questions are –

What specific outcomes do you hope to achieve in your business over the next quarter, the next six months, the next year?

Are there any challenges you’re currently facing that you believe could impact your goals?

What does success look like for your business a year from now?

What may surprise you is that if you’ve done your homework and put in the time to understanding your client’s story, this part of the conversation should be a close mirror of Part 2. If they bring up challenges, you should ideally already know about most (if not all) of them. When they talk about new initiatives, hopefully you’ve already considered those and included them in your earlier recommendations.

What you don’t want is for the client to surprise you with goals or challenges that you’ve never heard before. This can potentially mean a misalignment in your understanding of their “big picture”. But don’t panic if this happens! Think of it as an opportunity to realign and dig deeper into their evolution. This is your chance to recalibrate and ensure your team’s work stays focused on what truly matters to your client. Sometimes, these surprises can open the door to even better growth and collaboration.

Why QBRs Matter for Long-Term Success

Here’s the crux of the matter – when you’re deeply aligned with your client’s story, sales don’t need to be forced.

They happen naturally.

Once your clients see that you genuinely understand their business and aren’t just trying to make a quick sale, they start to ask for more on their own. Since adjusting my own frame of mind, I’ve had clients come to me directly asking for additional services, because they trust my recommendations and know I have their best interests at heart. Nurturing this kind of credibility comes from consistently delivering value and keeping the focus on what matters most to the client, rather than pushing unnecessary upgrades.

QBRs aren’t just a quarterly obligation. They’re a critical part of building lasting relationships with your clients. When done right, they help you showcase Perficient’s value, offer strategic recommendations, and ensure that both you and your client are in sync on the path forward.

By shifting your mindset and treating QBRs as a tool for building trust, you’ll find that sales and client loyalty come naturally. And trust me, once you’ve experienced that shift, you’ll never look at QBRs as a headache again!

The Use Case for Generative AI-Powered Sales Prospecting: Personalizing Outreach and Boosting Sales

Noelle Reinhold — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 19:11:18 +0000

Perficient’s Generative AI Lab, part of our larger Generative AI Innovation Group, is consistently exploring and implementing use cases for generative AI and helping clients operationalize it with policies, advocacy, controls, and enablement.

One use case organizations can consider is augmented research for sales prospecting, which allows sales professionals to find valuable prospects quickly and generate personalized and effective sales reports and outreach content.

How Does Generative AI-Powered Sales Prospecting Work?

Generative AI-powered sales prospecting involves leveraging online data sources to gather relevant information about a prospect, including its competitors, challenges, opportunities, and goals. It also leverages an internal database to map an organization’s case studies and services to the prospect’s needs. The result is a personalized sales pitch, communication scripts, and offering templates tailored to the prospect.

Why Should Organizations Consider Generative AI-Powered Sales Prospecting?

Typical sales prospecting includes sifting through vast amounts of data to identify and engage with potential clients. Traditional methods often involve time-consuming manual research, resulting in high overhead costs and a considerable drain on resources. Moreover, the accuracy and personalization of outreach are frequently compromised due to the volume of information that sales professionals must navigate and produce.

AI-powered sales prospecting offers a more efficient way to prospect, helping sales professionals:

Find valuable clients with low overhead research costs: By automating the research process, sales teams can significantly reduce overhead costs while still getting comprehensive insights into potential clients, allowing them to focus their efforts on building meaningful connections and closing deals.
Improve the quality and effectiveness of sales content: The sales team can ensure every call, email, and pitch resonates with their target audience by integrating personalized insights that speak to unique needs, ultimately enhancing the quality and effectiveness of communication.
Easily map company services with prospect challenges: By automating the connection between prospect challenges and the company’s offerings and experience, sales teams can efficiently develop a unique selling proposition for each individual target.

What’s Next?

Interested in how augmented research for sales prospecting can benefit your company, or would you like to explore other use cases for your organization? Contact us today.

Marketo Lead Scoring: Go Beyond Basic

Marc Babel — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 03:26:10 +0000

Better Lead Scoring = Better Conversations

Show me a sales team that has the spare time to decipher ambiguous MQLs worthy of attention, and I’ll show you a double rainbow. Can it happen? Yes. Does it happen often? Hardly.

Insert: Adobe Marketo Engage lead scoring that goes beyond a basic configuration.

When it comes to Marketo, the power to configure basic lead scoring principles such as ‘one email open’ = ‘one positive lead score’ is easy to do. But, taking the time to go beyond prototypical lead scoring in ways that sharpen conversations between sales and prospects is worth its weight in gold.

Effective Marketo instances act on a wide variety of attributes such as demographic, behavioral, and firmographic data points to build useful MQL (marketing qualified lead) profiles.

Spoiler alert: developing a more advanced Marketo lead scoring schema involves a tango between two; Marketo users that dance with sales personnel to gather inputs that guide how qualified leads should manifest.

Go Beyond Basic Lead Scoring

Evaluating leads merely on metrics such as email clicks or opens inevitably produces pseudo-qualified leads. Here are some of the deeper aspects to Marketo lead scoring one should take into account:

Explicit Versus Implicit Data

Explicit data is information that can dictate lead scoring based upon aspects such as industry, geography, job title, level of decision-making, or specific company. These are relevant, quantifiable data points in which true/falses, yes’/no’s, or clear-cut data points can be defined.

Some advanced explicit factors to consider:

Does the lead’s job title have access to a measurable budget?
Do the lead’s geographical characteristics match with how you can offer them a product/service?
Is the lead’s budget likely to be congruent with your product/service pricing?

On the other hand, implicit data is much more fluid in nature. Implicit data points typically involve interpretations such as product preferences, deliverability needs, or solutions to their problem. Implicit data can even go as far as to measure how content is ingested or which type of content is desired.

Some advanced implicit factors to consider:

What is the observed readiness to purchase?
What are the barriers to disseminating product/service information across all stakeholders?
Is there a specific type of content that resonates with a particular decision-maker?

Active Versus Passive Behavior

For lead scoring, active behavior measures the potential to buy, based upon measurable activities showing sales readiness.

Examples of active behavior:

Downloaded a sample RFP
Visited a pricing page
Watched a product demo video

Passive behavior recognizes the browsing type of engagement activity on a lower scale.

Examples of passive behavior:

Registered for a webinar
Viewed home webpage

There becomes a discernable difference between an inquiry of specific prices (active) versus viewing product/service capabilities (passive).

Keeping both behaviors in mind, creating a scoring token system that gives confidence to active versus passive behavior will dictate the fidelity of lead scoring.

Leveling Up Lead Scoring

At times, symbolized lead score leveling can initiate CRM automation to alert the rise or fall of lead scores.

Gather

Marketo users can’t always read the brains of sales. As such, it becomes difficult to gather the climate as to what certifies a lead as ‘sales-ready’. Aggregating said information to disseminate who, what, when, where, and how MQLs onto sales is part and parcel.

Here are some questions that Marketo users can ask that will bridge that gap:

What data is typically missing that would help the selling process?
What is the average time in which a lead exists in each stage of the sales cycle?
Is there specific data that can inform sales of past interactions?
What purchases were made by the prospect in the past?
Exactly which past opportunities were missed?

Assign

After an amalgamation of all data points above, it becomes necessary to assign scoring tokens to each. Take the time to implement which scoring tokens are the most important, followed by an iterative evaluation of how they come to fruition in informing sales.

Don’t forget about the importance of negative, or degradation, scoring. Leads can choose an alternative product/service or simply lose interest. Is there potential for recycling? Account accordingly.

{{my.Basic Lead Scoring}} +100

At the conclusion of launching a more advanced lead scoring program, interact with sales to determine results. The act of checking in with sales teams on a continuous basis ensures the evolution of an iterative lead scoring model.

Taking the extra steps to measure and score leads beyond basic measurements will always lead to better conversations between sales and leads.

Seeking help with more advanced lead scoring or something much more complicated? Reach out to the Perficient team to uncover how we can help you and your organization with marketing automation.

Perficient Academy: A One-Stop Shop for Career Growth

Marisa Lather — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 22:57:00 +0000

Ask many colleagues, and they will cite career growth as one of the primary drivers of their satisfaction and success at Perficient. It’s no surprise that Perficient takes career growth seriously, as evidenced by programs like Growth for Everyone, our People Promise, and the Career Growth Panels sponsored by the Women In Tech ERG (employee resource group).

Earlier in 2021, Perficient announced the launch of Perficient Academy, yet another tool for career growth for all colleagues at Perficient. Perficient Academy is a one-stop shop for all the tools and resources our colleagues need to support growth, learning, and development.

Whether it is partner training, sales training, or simply learning a new skill, Perficient Academy has you covered. Content is added and updated regularly, ensuring no shortage of interesting, educational, and developmental opportunities at your fingertips. Colleagues can also take advantage of learning paths designated by role:

Our Colleague’s Favorite Learning Paths in Perficient Academy

Sales Resources

Learn about tools for sellers and access updated Sales 101 training. The sales curriculum is a great way for any colleague to expand their understanding of all the solutions and services Perficient offers.

Consulting Basics

Brush up on client site etiquette, meeting management, communication, and other key skills.

Partner Training

Expand your technical knowledge by tapping into partner-specific training curriculum, including Adobe, IBM, Amazon Web Services, MuleSoft, and more.

HR and Manager Training

Directors and above can find an overview of manager responsibilities and expectations.

Project Leadership Development

Access training and resources to support project pursuits and leadership skills, such as how to use our proprietary tools, update project backlogs, and develop project launch and kick-off materials.

All colleagues are invited to join in the learning by taking a class – or more – in Perficient Academy and share what they learned with others. By our colleagues sharing what they’ve learned with their team, an ERG, or in a blog not only helps contribute to our culture of knowledge-sharing and builds one’s personal brand inside Perficient, but it also encourages others to take advantage of this phenomenal resource.

Perficient is proud to offer our colleagues multiple opportunities to learn, grow, and develop their skillsets. We’ve heard fantastic results so far with many colleagues taking advantage of this wide-ranging resource and look forward to hearing more stories of career growth within our global community!

READY TO GROW YOUR CAREER?

At Perficient, we continually look for ways to champion and challenge our talented workforce with interesting projects for high-profile clients, encourage personal and professional growth through training and mentoring, and celebrate our people-oriented culture and the innovative ways they serve Perficient and the community.

Visit our Careers page to see career opportunities and more!

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

Marketing, Not Sales, Should Own Your Customer Data Platform Strategy

Jordan Kanter — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 18:41:49 +0000

My Grandfather was incredible at sales. His energy, insight, and personality ensured his client’s success. As a result, he was consistently a top seller and took home numerous sales awards throughout his career.

But, like many sales professionals, patience was not a virtue. Business math and numbers did not interest him. Instead, his primary activity was always to build relationships with his customers.

On the surface, he wasn’t wrong. Sales’ core function should be to build and expand relationships, leading to more closed deals, not running numbers, and sifting through data.

I sometimes daydream about working with my Grandfather. I wonder what he would think about Sales leaders dealing with an overload of data given to him and his team. I picture an analyst handing him a spreadsheet full of numbers and saying, “See, it’s all right here! This is your million-dollar pipeline!” I can picture his eyes glazing over and the thoughts running through his head saying, “why do I care about this, and how is this supposed to help me close deals?”

Again, his reaction is not harmful, and after politely nodding and smiling through a long-winded explanation, he would take the report and “file it away” to “review” it later.

This story is why it is ludicrous for vendors to pitch Customer Data Platforms (CDP) as a Sales platform. No self-respecting seller wants to spend valuable time standing up a CDP and all the related technologies necessary for success. However, this is precisely why organizations need to make the correct decision and not force Sales to take on that responsibility. Rather, Marketing, and only Marketing, should own CDP Strategy. Because in the end, Marketing is influenced by data, and data drives decisions that put the organization in a position to succeed.

Pega and Adobe Unite to Elevate Customer Interactions

Udy Sharma — Wed, 05 May 2021 19:29:03 +0000

Exciting news was announced during PegaWorld’s iNspire event on May 4, 2021. Pega and Adobe are joining forces to provide an end-to-end customer-centric journey.

Leveraging Pega’s Customer Decision Hub (CDH) and Next Best Action Advisor—adaptive and predictive models can be used with Adobe customer applications to provide the most relevant offers or recommendations to customers. The personalized one-on-one offer can be delivered through customers’ preferred channels and recommendations are based on historical data, such as claims and referrals and customer interaction data.

Pega’s Next Best Action Advisor can provide real-time actions and recommendations when interacting with the customer. Customer’s web behavior data (e.g., click-stream activity) from Adobe and customer data from other sources can be used to determine next best actions for sales and customer service teams while interacting with the customer over different channels such as phone, text or chat. Such recommendations can be essential to gaining new customers or retaining existing ones.

CDH uses the extended customer analytic record (XCAR) model to store customer records in the decision data store. There are industry-specific (e.g., healthcare and financial services) XCAR data models available that come with an out-of-the-box business-friendly data element and can be extended to meet business needs. The data model elements can be populated either via a batch export or real-time integration with Adobe cloud storage. The data received from Adobe is then processed by the Next Best Action Advisor to predict customer behavior and provide relevant next best actions that can be made available across different channels.

Pega CDH is deployed on Pega Cloud which is HIPAA and HITRUST compliant. Sensitive customer data is stored according to the highest security standards. While data needed for decisioning can be of very high volume, CDH can pull relevant data fields from different sources that are required to make the next best action and provide those actions to Adobe in either real-time or as batch export.

Learn more about our Pega and Adobe Partnerships

As an Adobe Platinum Partner and Pega Partner Advisory Council Member, we are uniquely experienced in delivering impactful and measurable digital solutions for our clients. Learn more about our Adobe partnership here and our Pega partnership here.

Today I Wrote a Song for Sales

Paul Griffiths — Fri, 22 May 2020 20:22:59 +0000

Since I live in Massachusetts, I’m still working from my home office. We typically celebrate big events with something fun.

This morning, I wrote a song to commemorate a new client signing that went through. People have been doing this from the dawn of time — think of odes like Beowulf or the Odyssey but instead, the heroic journey was about digital transformation.

You get the idea.

Here’s a screenshot — sorry, I didn’t get copyright clearance. The band (my children, seriously) demanded a pay scale that was unwarranted. They are holding out for rights to the remix.

Even though we’re stuck at home, we’re still trying to be real human beings — authentic, silly, and celebratory when we can.

READY TO GROW YOUR SALES CAREER?

Learn more about what it’s like to work at Perficient at our Careers page.

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

B2B Digital Transformation: Assess Product Management & Sales

Skip Martin — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 14:00:05 +0000

When organizations begin a digital transformation and eCommerce journey, they often focus solely on technology. In reality, there are business decisions to be made and opportunities to explore before technology even comes into play. At the end of your business evaluation, you’ll start assessing internal capabilities. Once you’ve examined your availability and stocking abilities, you’ll want to look deeper into your product and sales processes.

Product Development and Management

When selling products online, you need to maintain consistent, rich product data across channels, including:

Product-specific information
Technical details
Accurate descriptions
Installation guides
Maintenance information
Compatible products
Imagery

This information must be consistent wherever a buyer encounters it. B2B companies often have data scattered across multiple locations and channels (ERP, cloud, internal network, etc.), making it difficult to share this information throughout the organization. As part of your digital transformation, rethink how you manage those processes and what information management systems are used, understanding that the information/data required today may be different from what has been managed in the past. As you consider these implications, you may need to bring new skill sets into the organization, as well as IT professionals, to do the work.
Tools such as product information management systems (PIM) can significantly improve your ability to manage and syndicate product data effectively. But product data management is not a one-time effort. Data management needs to be a pillar of your business. There are multiple product information management (PIM) systems that can consolidate and continuously update data across channels, but it is critical to establish clear ownership of and responsibility for that data.

Structure Data for Success
Sourcing data from suppliers is the main focus for distributors. If your supplier list is long, it can be difficult to gain and maintain product information to plug into your system. Those suppliers may also suffer from the limitations regarding product data management discussed previously. Establishing connections and a process to acquire, assimilate, and manage that data is crucial.
For manufacturers, the focus is on internal data dissemination and on supporting multiple distribution channels. From marketplaces to distributor sites to manufacturer marketing initiatives, it’s vital that your product data is extensive and uniform across platforms. Choosing a system and a team to manage all this data across these channels is a crucial part of that.

Sales Structure

The Ordering Process

When evaluating your sales process, begin with how orders come in.

Phone
Email
Online
EDI

Also consider:

Order type mix relative to customer size and value
Order complexity with respect to
Product complexity
- Number of line items
- Fulfillment complexity
- Compliance

Understand that transitioning to an online/self-service ordering model doesn’t happen overnight.
Your current customers will need support to transition with you as you make these changes.
Carefully consider the customer service implications that may accompany that transition.

Why EDI?
EDI is the exchange of business information in a standardized format. It allows your clients to send information from their system to yours without any human interaction. By automating data exchanges, many of the ordering processes can be streamlined and keeping data up-to-date is more efficient. In some cases, EDI is the primary technology driving transition to electronic ordering for B2B businesses. However, it requires significant setup and technical capabilities on the part of both the seller and the buyer. For many organizations selling to smaller organizations, the cost and complexity of EDI may be excessive.

Sales Force Culture

The current structure of your sales workflow will affect the choices you make in transitioning to a digital sales approach. Traditional sales teams are more transactional in their approach. They spend their time taking orders and making sure those orders are recorded and filled.
Consultative sales teams work to understand their clients’
business to better help them anticipate future needs in
selecting products and services.

Automating order entry (self-service) puts pressure on sales teams to transition to more consultative models. This will require training, and there will inevitably be pushback from those not prepared to make the transition. That being said, you’re going to need the technology to support these types of initiatives. To learn more about digital transformation in B2B eCommerce, check out our guide.

F is for Funnel

Jill Grozalsky — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 13:30:30 +0000

Synonyms: Sales Funnel, Path to Purchase, Revenue Funnel, Sales Process

From a definition standpoint, we are talking specifically about a sales funnel which is the process that companies lead their prospects/customers through when purchasing products/services. Funnels are representations of the journey that prospects go through from first contact with you until a completed purchase.

Why do we care about the funnel?

We care about funnels because they are how we manage the sales process and customer touchpoints towards a purchase. While every organization has a unique funnel, the idea that there are distinct stages in the funnel help guide the business in what content to deliver and how to engage with your audience to move people through the funnel and to go from an untouched prospect to a qualified lead.

How do we create a funnel/understand our funnel?

Hate to break it to you – but you have a sales funnel whether you know it or not. Users are naturally moving through and engaging with your business, but when you better understand your funnel the more influence you will have over it. First, start by figuring out what the distinct stages of the funnel are. Once you have the those stages identified, it is important to focus on your audience’s needs at each stage in the funnel as that will define how you market to your audiences. It will also help determine the content that you put on your site (and where) and it will also inform what data you capture on your audiences and how it will be used.

Lastly, your funnel will most likely need tweaks over time and one of the best ways to understand how users are moving through the funnel is to look at the conversion rates at each stage and that will give insight into where tweaks can be made, more targeted content needs to be delivered, leads need more hand holding, etc.

If you want to chat about how to nurture leads through your sales funnel or discuss how your site is moving people through the funnel today, fill out the contact form or HMU on twitter @jgrozalsky.

Stay thirsty, friends!

Episerver Partner Connect Boston: A Recap

Jo Troxell — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 10:20:38 +0000

Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Episerver Partner Connect event in Boston. Over the course of an afternoon, participants were provided with detailed insights into Episerver; where the product stands in comparison to its competitors, how Episerver’s products come together to connect analytics, content and digital marketing through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and where the product is going from here.

Being newer to the Episerver game, I was really excited to go to the event to learn as much as I could and meet the experts who could answer the warehouse of questions I had. Thankfully, I now have a list of Episerver colleague contact information to use as more questions pop up!

The event had an amazing atmosphere with a combination of sessions, open forum to ask questions and finished off with a networking event. During the sessions, Episerver leaders spoke about their desire to continue to drive business forward for their partners, like me, and to change the mindset about how their product can be used for more than just a marketing website.

As I took about eight pages of notes, not including the slide decks from the individual presentations, I am going to attempt to condense them down to some key points and pieces that made me excited!

Episerver Ascend 2019

Annual event happening in Miami, Fl, October 27-29th covering topics like strategy (my favorite), website migrations, intense developer and code base sessions and product roadmap and labs. Definitely sounds like a must-attend event.

Partner Sales Academy

Coming soon! A knowledge base site to make sure partners and customers can stay up-to-date on the product, as well as what product information can help us preach about Episerver, and also why it might be a great fit for a potential customer.

New Product Features

Personalization, Analytics and AI
- At the B2B Online Summit, attendees were questioned about future trends with the overwhelming response being personalization, mass creating personalized content and validating targeted content with data. Episerver’s product team spoke of enhancements at this recent event to their analytics and AI capabilities and reiterated that improving this functionality will continue to be a priority in the future. With Episerver’s AI functionality already being able to personalize content after one page view, I am desperately curious what these additional enhancements will be. Stay tuned!
Episerver Commerce
- Their eCommerce product and what I have always heard Episerver is known for, has some new features coming as well including changes to look and feel and extended order management capabilities underway.

New Sales Tools

With the target audience of the event being partner-focused, new material to help partners sell is being added including a Digital Agility Model and current resources are being updated such as new customer stories and reports like the Forrester Total Economic Impact report. Episerver has set an internal goal to maintain previous and new documentation in a timely manner!

A few other tidbits were shared as well but why spoil everything when you can check out Episerver’s site for product information and events including Ascend 2019. It was a spectacular event and I left feeling motivated and inspired to learn more about Episerver and how I can use all of its features.

One Episerver colleague told me that they are committed to focusing on improving the product to give customers what they want and making sure it is the right fit for their new customers and not just blindly selling.

Interested in learning a bit more about Episerver, have more general questions about digital strategy or Perficient? Leave a comment, submit the contact us form or catch me on LinkedIn or Twitter (I will be a Twitter master one day)!

Empowering Sales Teams in a Digital World

Karie Daudt — Tue, 21 May 2019 14:00:19 +0000

On June 28, I will be speaking at IRCE, the commerce industry’s biggest and most influential annual event. Sharing the stage with our client, Geriatric Medical, I’ll explore how B2B businesses can use technology to empower their sales teams and transition their operation into the digital world.
In an age of eCommerce, the modern B2B salesperson doesn’t just take orders. Rather, they must operate to be consultants for clients; a helping hand when necessary, and a subject matter expert always. To do their jobs well, sales reps need the digital tools to move forward and add value for their customers while the trends of self-service and eCommerce continue to evolve.
It starts with your sales teams. Often times there’s a disconnect between traditional sales reps and the digital reality. Customer expectations are shifting, and the mindset of your sales team needs to shift with them.

Technology to Do the Job

The B2B buying journey is more complicated and has more people involved than the B2C process. Multiple people – including a researcher, subject matter expert, or buyer – may weigh in before a sale is actually made. When placing an order, the customer may request multiple quotes, materials and spec documents, and other supporting materials. After the order is placed, they will probably want shipping updates, customer support, and the ability to review and reorder past items.
It’s difficult and a waste of time for a sales rep to be interacting with each of these individuals along their journey when they can get the information they need via self-service. Implementing technology to automate tasks like quote generation, shipping information, and re-orders will enable your sales reps to stop acting as order-takers and move into a sales consultancy role, where they can assist customers in product choices and larger issues they may face.

Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Marketing

Just as you want to empower your customers with the data and information they need, you want to extend the same capabilities to your internal sales teams. Endless cold-calling and email sends will not go far without the data to target and market smarter. Your sales team needs access to the data surrounding what their clients are ordering, how they’re buying, and when. With insight into these touchpoints, your sales reps can understand their clients better and create a more personalized experience when they do interact with them.
To improve the marketing experience you’re providing to your customers, you need to tailor your marketing approach as well. Using the data from your clients in your backend systems, marketers can create a more holistic marketing approach. You can target promotions to engage your customers, acquire new customers, and grow revenue. Connecting your data to benefit marketing will help your sales team in return.
Customers are at the center of your experience, and your technology needs to drive that experience. Technologies like marketing automation, customer-relationship management (CRM) systems, product information management (PIM) systems, and other eCommerce tools can enable your salespeople to be more proactive and provide real value to their customers. That is what is going to differentiate you from your competition in the long run.
To learn more about how you can strategically transition your sales team into the digital mindset and improve the customer experience you provide, check out my presentation at IRCE on June 28, 2019. I will be sharing the stage with Geriatric Medical, a client we helped with marketing automation and digital experience challenges.

These 5 Stats Will Make You Revisit Your CX Strategy in 2019

Marisa Lather — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:58:36 +0000

Good news travels fast — but bad news travels faster

With your business dependent on customer satisfaction, being able to service them regardless of their issue is what sets winning brands apart.

On the flip side, when service is not up to par, damage to the brand can be significant. And businesses are paying attention.

Use these five stats to motivate a deeper look at your Customer Experience (CX) strategy.

1. Americans tell an average of fifteen people about a poor service experience, versus the eleven people they’ll tell about a good experience. (American Express)

Think about the last time you had a great service experience. Did you enjoy it? Did you tell anyone? Perhaps.

Now think of a time you had a terrible service experience. What was your reaction the next time you heard that brand’s name mentioned? The average reaction is probably an eye roll and a few choice comments.

Proper technology can ensure your customer data is at the fingertips of your service staff, ensuring continuity and overall better service.

2. It is anywhere from 5-25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one. (Harvard Business Review)

Offset your costs for acquiring new customers by keeping the ones you already have.

As brands look beyond the initial point of sale and into the potential lifetime of purchases from a customer, having a technology that can scale with your goals is vital.

Additionally, customer insight through tools like Salesforce allow reps to make meaningful up-sell and cross-sell recommendations, actually adding value and not wasting a customer’s time.

3. 58% of customers will refuse to do business with an organization following a negative customer experience and 49% will caution their friends against doing business with the company. (KovaCorp)

This is scary because it’s not just the customer’s business you are losing, but potentially that thereof anyone the disgruntled customer influences. Making sure your service team is armed with the proper tools to keep them competitive is a foundational key to customer success.

BONUS: Traits to look for in a winning service team member

4. 72% of businesses say improving customer experience is their top priority. (Forrester)

This is the one time the bandwagon makes sense to jump on. If you don’t offer a competitive sales and service experience, customers will naturally go where the experience is better. When there are similar products and services up for grabs, customers use their experience with the brand as the defining factor for who to do business with.

5. U.S. consumers are willing to spend 17% more to do business with companies that deliver excellent service. (American Express)

Changing the way business is done is not easy, therefore it takes a lot of motivation to initiate action. The easiest way to do that is to show the impact CX can have on revenue.

Customers are willing to spend more for an outstanding service experience. Are you offering one?

Which of these customer experience stats jumped out to you? To learn more, check out the Customer Experience Journey in the guide below.